Man who gunned down brother will go to mental hospital

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Police officers found Cedric Paris dying from a gunshot wound to his chest on a sidewalk in the 6400 block of Clara Lee Avenue on Jan. 18, 2105.

Man who gunned down brother will go to mental hospital

Police officers found Cedric Paris dying from a gunshot wound to his chest on a sidewalk in the 6400 block of Clara Lee Avenue on Jan. 18, 2105.

SAN DIEGO — A man who murdered his younger brother on the front lawn of the victim’s home in Allied Gardens will be sent to Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino, a judge ruled Friday.

Jason Douglas Paris, 45, was convicted of first-degree murder and lying in wait in the Jan. 17, 2015, death of 42-year-old Cedric Paris. A jury decided that the defendant was insane when he killed his sibling.

After the verdict, a doctor re-evaluated the defendant and recommended that he be kept at a state mental hospital.

Paris could be held at the psychiatric hospital for life. However, if he is reevaluated — and found to be sane — he could apply for release.

“He is a threat. I live in constant fear that Jason will be released and kill again,” said the victim’s widow, Janeth, of Jason Paris.

She said before the killing, the defendant was considered a family member.

“We trusted him,” she said.

At trial, Deputy District Attorney Jessica Coto told the jury that Paris planned to kill his brother because he thought everybody in the family was out to get him. Coto said the defendant bought a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun in September 2014 and went to a gun range twice to shoot at human targets before driving to Allied Gardens the night of the murder.

The defendant told his roommate’s daughter, “I’ve got some business to take care of,” then drove around his brother’s neighborhood for hours before knocking on his front door about 9:45 p.m., the prosecutor told the jury.

The defendant asked his brother to come outside. He shot him four times at close range after retrieving his gun from his SUV, then drove off, the prosecutor said.

Janeth Paris called 911 after finding her husband’s body in the front yard.

The defendant was pulled over on northbound Interstate 15 near Scripps Ranch. At police headquarters, he told detectives that he became upset when his younger brother — who he thought was supposed to look after him — became involved with Janeth, Coto said.

The brothers’ mother described her sons’ story like the Bible story of Cain and Abel, in which Abel found favor with his parents — Adam and Eve — and Cain became jealous and killed Abel.

Deputy Public Defender Whitney Antrim told jurors that her client — who was diagnosed in 1994 with a form of schizophrenia — believed his brother was a demon and, in his mind, he had “no choice” but to kill him.

When he was off his medications, he had the “deranged and delusional” belief that his brother was a demonic figure and that there was “no other way out” but to kill him, the defense attorney said.

“It was God’s will,” Antrim said of her client’s thinking.

Janeth Paris said she and her husband hadn’t seen the defendant in two years when he showed up at their home that night.